Snapshots
by LegalBlonde
Summary: COMPLETE. The story of Jack and Irina, told in eleven photographs.
1. first, second, third

Rating: PG

Spoilers:  SEE WARNING.

Ship:  J/I

Rating: PG

Archive: CM; anyone else ask first so I can come visit.

Summary:  The story of Jack and Irina, told in eleven photographs.

AN:  This is written for the J/I forum challenge over at SD-1.  Elements: a flashback, stars, flame, and a scene with ashes, incorporated near the end.  (Credit for the ashes paragraph goes to the wonderfully talented blackdawn.)

Major spoiler warning: This entry is based on Season 3 spoiler spec.  If you don't want hints about Jack and Irina during those two years, read this after the 28th.

First.  Christmas Party.

They stand just off-center in a thick Polaroid square.  Their colors are muted, her hair too muddy, his skin too sallow.  The aging photograph displays them in earth tones, an overexposure, or perhaps just a reflection of the dull colors that so popular that year.  They stand, side by side, perfectly dated and locked in time.  

You see air between them, you might slide a pencil or even a whole hand between the two.  His arm is laid across her shoulder, lightly, tentatively, as if it is not accustomed to resting there, as if he will snatch it back the moment the flash fades.  

She does not flinch from the touch, or from the camera flash; it colors her dark eyes red, glitters in her bright smile.  He smiles too, only a little, in that tight way of his.  His eyes look above the camera, past it, and if you look closely you might read the expression as mischievousness, or perhaps gloating.  He is proud of himself -- whatever little game it is, he has won.  

You might suspect it has something to do with the woman he just put his arm around. 

What you don't see:

The friend behind the camera, waving a hand, directing them to pose and smile.  The glimmer of jealousy, a friendly kind, that this woman came to the party with Jack.  The aftermath of the photo, the way they slide out of the thick white frame, his confidence increasing as he settles his arm more heavily on her shoulder.  Her head tilting back, she laughs.  His deep chuckle as he joins in.  

A drive home, the nerves, the wait.  His hand rests on the small of her back, awkward there as it had been on her shoulder.  But she smiles, turns toward him, tilts her head up just enough to hint, not quite enough to invite.  He swallows, the hand perspires, clammy against her thick sweater.  He bends down, leaning forward: the kiss is brief, hesitant, gentle.  She smiles at him as she pulls away, dark eyes glittering.  He smiles back, opening his mouth to speak and shutting it again, forgetting what he intended to say.  She leaves him with a simple goodnight, squeezes his arm as she turns away.  

Second.  Mother.

The woman in the center of the frame grins at the camera, thin lips parting wide over her teeth.  If I asked, you would say she is closer to seventy than to fifty-four, but the picture will not show her true age.  Nor will it show the cancer consuming her from the inside, the wrenching pain that will end her life only a few months later.  It will reveal the odd thickness of her curled brown hair, as if it belonged somewhere else, the odd flatness of her chest, hidden beneath a flowing blouse.  

But you will not notice any of this, because she distracts you with the whiteness of her teeth and the happiness in her eyes.  You will look at her expression and think, _home._  

She sits ramrod-straight on a loud floral sofa, with an afghan of knitted pastels drawn across her waist.  The height of her cheekbones and the jut of her chin are reflected in the face of the man sitting next to her.  He sits a few inches away, knees angled toward her, smiling in her direction.  His gaze is directed not at her, but past her, to the other end of the photo.  His near arm is bent in a sharp V, his hand resting on her arm, just below the shoulder.  Perhaps he was getting her attention, perhaps shielding her.  On one finger of that hand, you will notice a simple gold band.

It matches a gold band worn by the second woman, standing at the other end of the picture.  She hovers on its edge, as if entering from another room, revealed in profile.  Her back is cut off straight, and her hair in a perfect 90-degree angle.  Her left hand waves through the air, caught in mid-gesture.  Perhaps she was speaking.  

Her lips are parted, in what might be a word or the beginning of a smile.  Her visible eye locks with those of the man seated on the couch; his smile is for her.  

What you don't see: 

A bug, so they call it.  A miniscule mess of black plastic and wire, large now, but small for the time.  It decorates the interior lining of his wallet, which he will carry with him to places she cannot go.  He would discover it much later, full of cool burning anger and bright red fury, and add it to the long list of reasons he gives himself to hate her.  

A beginning, like a spark, the tiniest hint of a being, of a daughter, and later a woman with her mother's glittering eyes and her father's set jaw.  Not even the woman knows of its presence yet, it is a secret, waiting to be discovered.  Her stomach is flat, even, like the calm assurance in her eyes.  She does not know that she already carries a liability, like a lit fuse, it will be simultaneously her greatest triumph and her undoing.  

Third.  The Illusion.

She's wearing a rather hideous periwinkle hospital gown, just the wrong color for her, and it heightens the pallor of her skin.  Her dark hair has been pulled back in some sort of loose ponytail, and damp wisps of it curl against her face, stuck to her temples.  She is not smiling, but she has that Mona Lisa look, as if she has just finished smiling, or is just about to.  Her face is not angled toward the camera, but down at the blanket in her arms.  The material looks rough and scratchy, far too coarse for its purpose.  It's an unfortunate shade of pink that will doubtless remind you of pepto bismol, the color so deep that you might miss at first the tiny profile poking out from it, near the crook of her arm.  

She holds her free hand above the bundle, fingers curled in, only her pinky extended.  A tiny pink hand reaches out from the blanket, gripping that finger with a strength too great for something so small.  She is not looking at the camera, but down at that tiny profile, and the expression in her eyes is something he has never seen before, something he can never forget.  He stands behind the camera, viewfinder blurring before him as he blinks too quickly.  

_There were times when the illusion of our marriage was as powerful to me as it was for you._  He likes to pretend she was mocking him; no question she was baiting him.  He likes to believe it was a lie.  But this photo haunts him, swims before his vision when he closes his eyes, materializes on his blank ceiling late at night.  He remembers the expression on her face when she held their daughter, remembers the expression moments later when she looked up at him, jabbing at his eyes behind the camera.  

It was her worst lie.  But when he sees this picture, he can't help but believe it.  


	2. fourth, fifth, sixth

Fourth.  Irina Derevko.

The photo is rendered in black and white, the edges of everything blurry and indistinct, as if someone has been rubbing it down with a pencil eraser.  It is not a photo, per se, though it has been blown up and thrown down on glossy photo paper.  It is a still, the best of many bad shots of a blurry, indistinct taupe hallway.  

She does not look directly at the camera, but a little bit below it, turning her head back over one shoulder.  The camera hangs above her, a bit behind, as all security cameras seem to do.  Her face is still, difficult to read, but she has the look of one standing on edge, like an animal scenting the wind.  She feels the camera's presence, even if she does not see it, and continues her quick steps down the hall.

They showed him this photo six weeks after Laura died, paperclipped to the top of a thick file, "classified" stamped in black across the cover.  They dropped it on the table before him, the weight of it jarring the table and clanking against his leg irons.  They pointed, and questioned, and watched the tiny motions of his hands, and the sweat on his neck, and his eyes.  They wanted to hear answers, to see his photo alongside hers, striding down a gray corridor.  But he had no answers, no information.  He did not know what day this was taken.  He recognized the woman.  He gave her that blouse: crimson silk that set off the soft glow of her dark hair.  

He remembers this picture, burned into his memory, sealed in with the clank of an iron door.  In this photograph, he met a woman named Irina Derevko.  

Fifth.  Broken Trust.

Another black-and-white, another blurry still.  The woman at the far end is difficult to recognize, no more than a supposition.  She stands at a conference table, both hands flat on the table in front of her.  The hands are large, the fingers long.  He believes the picture when he sees them.  

Her shining hair is bound up in a loose knot behind her head, a mere dark blot on the print.  She stands at the far left of the picture, while everyone around her sits.  All men, all white, all wearing some variation of the same dark suit.  Some look down at the files in their hands, but most look at her.  The camera shows only the dark blot, the tapered back of her suit, the splay of her hands.  

He found the photo at Langley after he took the risk of breaking in.  He'd seen most of the material there before, but the snapshot caught him by surprise.  Dated fourteen months after her  disappearance, seven months after they let him out of solitary, the photo is the best the CIA had to show for the twenty years it spent tracking Irina Derevko.  

He nearly choked when he saw it.  His vision clouded and his throat constricted and he wondered for a moment if this was what it felt like to have a heart attack.  

Twenty years after she broke him, a snapshot told him that Irina Derevko was still alive.  

Sixth.  Memory.

She carried a picture in her head, she told him.  A loving husband, a generous man, a patriot.  That picture, she said, was gone.

They stood across from one another for the first time in twenty years, in a bare room, plexiglass wall between them.  So many things between them.  

He watched an image slip away, saw its last embers flicker in her dark eyes, even as he concentrated on keeping his own face blank, his voice even.  Seeing her again, standing there, he formed a new image, a picture that would haunt him.  He could not be sure, at that time, what it would come to mean.


	3. seventh, eighth and ninth

Seventh.  Prague.

The photograph belongs on the society pages: people in formal clothing, standing ever-so-politely next to each other, fingers making foggy spots on the champagne glasses as they smile. She stands off to one side, just behind them, in profile.  The photographer must have been standing off-center, or perhaps he was caught by the woman standing on the perimeter.  Wouldn't be the first time.  

She wears a dress of deep crimson, cinched at the waist and cut deep down the center, skirt skimming her calves.  High heels, light laces around the ankles, in a color that matches the dress exactly.  A glittering bracelet, a simple, matching earring on her visible ear.  Her hair, done in waves and curls, falls halfway down her back.  She holds one hand partially up, fingers clamped tight around the matching clutch.  A snatch of black and white protrudes from the top, caught in the latch.  

Her eyes study the scene before her, something outside the camera's range.  Her bottom lip is caught up below her top one, pressed in her teeth.  Look closely, and you will see the delicate lines of veins winding at her temples, just above her eyes.  They bulge slightly, as if she's worried or pressured, as if she's thinking of something far removed from the glowing candles and bubbling champagne.  

Outside the frame:  A man, a dark figure, a cellphone.  Her daughter, he told her, is dead.  

She did not believe him.  She pressed her dress and curled her hair and stepped out in front of the flashing cameras and the hundreds of pairs of eyes.  She disregarded the risk, ignored the danger, as she's become so good at doing.  This is her only message, the only attempt she will make to contact him.  Because she believes he will find her, believes he will help her, believes they will search together.  

She steps out into the dark street, picking her way back home under flickering streetlamps and dim stars.  A glint of silver light picks out the moisture on her cheek, the darkness in her eyes.  Her stomach winds tight, but she holds onto her hope, her reason for coming out into the light.  

He will come.  Together, they will find her.  

Eighth and Ninth.  Hotel Room.  

The picture reminds him of another, from long ago, washed-out and grainy.  The black-and-white edges seem fuzzy; they are bathed in a tint of modern blue.  Even so, the man's face is unmistakable.  He walks toward the camera down an indistinct taupe hall, eyes angled down, lips pressed thin together.  He wears a suit, jacket buttoned, and a straight tie.  His right hand, fingers dipping down out of the snapshot's range, grips the stiff black handle of a briefcase.  If the frame stretched further, you would see it is a shining patent black, not the dull muddy brown of the case he carries to work.  

This, too, is a still, frozen from a long digitized file surveilling that hallway.  This, too, they paperclip to the outside of a file, banging it down on the table before him, so loudly it reverbrates off his shackles.  "Confess," they say.  "We know."

He presses his lips tight, tighter than in the picture, but does not speak.  They can only conjecture at what lies outside the frame; he knows for certain.  He does not speak, and for this they frame him in her glass cage.  

This is what he sees:

A hotel room, a dark night, he enters four hours after she arrives.  He wears the same dark suit, pressed neatly, carries the same shining leather case.  She places one hand over the handle, his hand still on it.  He does not flinch.  

He sets the case down on the table, flicks the latches open.  Hand movements are small, precise.  She stands back, understanding the need for this little ceremony.   He pulls the papers from inside, originals remaining in a sealed pouch in the center.  One copy for her, one for him, everything in triplicate.  

She sits at the table across from him, working her way through the records with two highlighters, a pen, and a thick black marker.  He sits in the other chair, knees angled toward her, bent low over his work.  She tucks her hair behind one ear.  They discuss.  

When he kisses her, it is neither hesitant nor soft.  This is need: dragging her body to him, pushing, pulling, breathing.  Distraction in her soft hair, diversion in her cool skin.  She does not recoil: she needs to forget as much as he does.  The passionate desperation is a pattern between the two of them.  

She straightens his tie; he snaps the latches shut on the briefcase.  She retains one copy of the records, and of the notes they made together.  She smiles when she passes his copies back to him, reminds him they work well together.  Together, they will find her.  They have to.

The camera snaps his photo again as he exits, early morning sun blotted out in the long, windowless hall.  He wears the same suit, carries the same case, leaving them with a photograph that is, at first glance, merely the inverse of the other.  Only a practiced eye will notice the wrinkles in his suit, the bouncing angle at which he carries the case, the tight press of his lips which is not a frown.  It is something else entirely.  

And so they lock him away, in her glass cage.


	4. tenth, eleventh

Tenth.  Bruises.

A grouping of purple-gray finger-marks around his wrist, like a cluster of overripe grapes.  She comes, and she goes, and this is what she leaves him: marks beneath the skin.

He thinks of them in clinical terms, obtuse and pleasantly dry.  Ecchymoses.  Hematoma.  Ignores the plan-sense meaning, the one in his head.  Bruises.  Deep.

"How did they happen?" they ask.  They peruse the photographs, enlarged, documenting every mark on his skin.  No matter that the injury is minor, they will horde any information they have.  

"I tried to duck out of her way before she had the chance to strike.  She saw what I was doing and grabbed my wrist."

"And what did she do then?"

"Nothing.  I twisted away and was able to leave."

They nod their heads, make their little marks.  He acted properly, they will say.  He eluded capture.

He wishes he had gotten off so easily.  

The feeling follows him at night, the pressure of a cold hand on his wrist, grimy and dark, clipped nails digging into his skin.  

When he found her, she was bent over the balcony railing, the material of her silk shirt sticking to her back in the heat.  Frozen still, she refused to see him in the dark, kept her back to him, muscles taut and stiff.  He turned on every lamp in the room behind her, light falling on his briefcase, her half-packed bags, the half-spent book of matches on the table behind her, embers still glowing from the just-extinguished flames.  The dull, orange glow lit her like an angel on the road to hell. She was holding one fist over the edge, tilting it slowly, and he waited several seconds more before she turned to him at last. Her smile was painful, her eyes clear, and he watched her fingers loosen as the ashes fell.

He stepped forward, though the sliding door, reaching for her hand, but it was too late.  The last ashes, the last record of where they had been, what they had accomplished, fell like thick smoke through the cool air.  She reached for him, hand cold, smeared black and still grimy with the ashes.  She gripped his wrist as if it were a rappelling rope, as if it would support her, keep her from blowing away.  

"They're gone," she says.  "The photographs. All of them.  There's no record that you've been here at all; you can go back now.  Go back to Sydney."

"You should come."  The words leave his mouth, expressionless, flat.  He does not know whether he means them.

She shakes her head, eyes still clear, smile still sad.  "No.  I've paid my price.  Sydney will never accept me for who I am.  But she will accept you, so long as you're not with me."

His jaw tightens; his lips press thin.  "That's your choice?"

"Take care of her, Jack."  The clear tears spill out of her eyes, trace down her face, and they wet his cheeks when he kisses her.  She smells of salt and sweat and smoke, and her lips and her skin are as soft as they have always been.  This will be the picture he carries with him; the one photograph he can safely keep: the image seared into his memory.

When he steps back, she smiles, releasing her grip on his wrist.  "I always loved you."

He nods, curtly, the best response he can manage.  "The CIA is no longer surveilling me.  When Sydney changes her mind, you should initiate contact."

She smiles, brightly this time, knowing what his words mean, understanding the things he cannot bring himself to tell her.  

Eleventh.  Memories and promise.

She told him once: she carried a picture in her head for twenty years, of a loving husband, a generous man, a patriot.  He carries a similar picture now, weathered and darkened with time.  Of a loving mother, a beautiful wife, a choice.  Fine creases cross the surface, like the tiny lines around her eyes, and his.  Dark smudges blur the surface: betrayals, bruises, games.  But behind the black smudges she smiles at him, eyes bright, she reminds him of a promise she made one night on a balcony.  That she had loved him; that she would continue to do so.  

He carries its inverse, too, in his mind: that he loved her then, that he has never been able to stop doing so.  Behind the dark lists, the catalogues of things she has done to him, of injuries he's inflicted in return, he remembers this image.  He burned her old photographs, after Laura died, and she burned their new ones, one night on a balcony.   So he holds this picture in his head, with its sounds, its senses, its impressions.  They are the mark she leaves on him, the reminder of his promise to her, unspoken, but understood.  

He will never be able to let her go.


End file.
